Wednesday, February 04, 2009

So yeah, that whole thing about ESPN having their own High School from earlier....is completely untrue. According to ESPN, the Associated Press ran the story without getting a comment from them, and in turn, completely distorted the whole thing. Via CNBC....

Today, the New York Post had a story about the New York City Department of Education teaming up with ESPN to create a school called the Business of Sports School or BOSS. The high school, the paper said was "part of a push to create 21st-century versions of what are rapidly becomeing out-of-date vocational or trade schools."

I actually saw the story first on Awful Announcing and found out that the Associated Press had picked up on the story. Surprised that there was no comment from ESPN, I corresponded with spokesman Mike Soltys who sent this to me via e-mail.

"Reports suggesting ESPN is launching a high school are overstated," Soltys said, via e-mail. "ESPN the Magazine has made a non-financial commitment to help develop a curriculum, in addition to providing other volunteer-based support."

Thanks for the credit and thanks for clearing that up, Darren. It really did seem too good to be true, and very odd that the Post ran with it without doing some fact checking first. What's that you say? AA did that too??? Well I'm a blog, I can get away with that sort of thing.

The real story is that the school is a Career and Technical Education school, and that ESPN the Mag will be helping it out with curiculum, internships, speakers and the like. You can read more about B.O.S.S. through the link below if you're interested....